


sleeping in a cardboard box

by orphan_account



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Age Regression, Blood Pacts, Genderfluid Character, Hospitalization, Mafia AU, Mental Health Issues, No Relationship, On the Run, Other, Platonic Love, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self Harm, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-17 02:36:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14178675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: tyler ran away from home. josh doesn’t have a home. blurry is looking for a home. jenna and debby are each other’s homes. it all ties up in a neat bow.





	sleeping in a cardboard box

**Author's Note:**

> srry for not writing these past couple months have been WILD ily all <3

josh looks up at the ceiling. there’s a painting of a cloud on it. a pink cloud, with an angel peeping out from behind the fluff.

he hears chatter coming from somewhere in the room, and finds that there’s a pink tv playing cartoons upon sitting up. it’s blues clues, which is his little sister’s favorite. it’s also his favorite, but he’d never tell. 

“joshua dun?” a voice calls out. he looks to the door. there’s a nurse wearing blue scrubs. it doesn’t match the pink of his room- pink cloud, pink tv, pink sheets, pink pink pink. she smiles at him. “medicine.”

she hands him a paper cup filled with pills and a glass of orange juice. he sips the orange juice for a bit before taking the pills. the nurse sits next to him.

“the others tell me you weren’t feeling well yesterday, huh?” josh shakes his head. she frowns. “take care of yourself. okay, mr. josh?” he nods, and she pats his arm and stands up. “i’ll see you later.”

she leaves the room, and josh spits out his pills in the trash can next to his bed. 

————————————

tyler enjoys sunday mornings, if it’s at his gramma’s. when he’s at his house, his mom yells at everyone and his dad hits his brothers. never him, never tyler. tyler was the good kid.

sunday mornings at his gramma’s started early. at 7:30, the sun shines through his bedroom window and into his eyes. he grabs his stuffed tigger and rubs his eyes. then he can get up and eat lucky charms while watching cartoons. his gramma holds him and kisses his forehead as blues clues plays on the screen in front of them.

tyler doesn’t get to spend sunday mornings at his gramma’s anymore. not since his mom married him and he moved them two hours away from gramma and blues clues and his stuffed tigger. he didn’t like him, not at all.

but that was years ago. five years ago, exactly. in those five years, tyler stopped talking to all his friends, his gramma moved into a nursing home, and his mom started seeing a doctor for her “aggressive behavior.”

he didn’t think she was the aggressive one. she just got grumpy sometimes. he was the aggressive one, who grabbed zack’s arm too tight and hit him so hard he lost a tooth. but no one cared, they only cared about “that crazy bitch, that joseph woman.” 

he wants to run away. far away, take his brothers with him and make sure his mom left her husband behind. but that’s just wishful thinking. he couldn’t actually do that.

in the meantime, all he could do was push through the sunday mornings at his house. 

————————————

joshua dun was admitted into the hospital at the age of 16, after chasing a handful of advil with three glasses of brandy and being found with multiple self-inflicted wounds upon inspection. 

while he is inpatient, he is not allowed to do the following:  
* use chewing stim toys   
* wear his binder out of his room (as it was found he was also wearing it for long periods of time)  
* shave

he found ways around these rules pretty quickly. he’d fallen back into the habit of chewing on his hands, and he could bind with sports bras throughout the day. 

as for shaving, he figured he could go without it. it wasn’t worth the extremely triggering experience of being “supervised” while he bathed. it was bad enough not having a curtain while he showered amongst dozens of cis girls, he wasn’t going to add a nurse intensely watching him drag a dull razor over his armpits to the equation.

he doesn’t take his morning pills, never does. he knows it’s not gonna help him to get out, but they make him sick if he eats them on an empty stomach. spitting them out seemed better than talking to someone about it.

————————————

on december 31st, at exactly 1:24 in the morning, tyler joseph decided he knew exactly what his new year’s resolution was going to be: he had to run away.

he had to leave, leave before the anger that boiled deep in his gut whenever he looked at his mother’s husband made him do something stupid and irrational. leave before he realized what he was going to do. 

he felt bad that he couldn’t save them all. he was supposed to be the protector, the angel, the “good one.” but he was scared to live there, and so he’d run away. run away and never come back.

and he’d bring his stuffed tigger.

————————————

there was something comforting about making runs again. ever since blurry had been promoted to the underboss, it was all orders and uptight and dirty work. there was something peaceful in driving a bundle of pot across the border, a routine he knew well. 

he was never stopped- slap on a baseball cap and dirty clothes and bring the truck and he was free to go. if there was a particularly lazy guard, he could sometimes get away with just flashing his fake id. not that it was an issue, though. he had this act down.

“passport?” the man said. blurry handed him the slip. that was real, at least. he smiled at the attendant. “what’cha doing ‘cross the border?”

“just visiting,” he said tightly. talkative attendants were the worst. 

“who?” he asked. blurry grit his teeth. he hated having to go along with the story. it was the one thing he didn’t miss about this experience.

“my sister-in-law.” the attendant opened his mouth again. “wife came down about a week ago, but i had to work. she’s having a baby.” 

“boy or a girl?”

“don’t know yet, she’s making it a surprise. says it feels like a boy.”

the attendant handed him his passport back. tipped his hat. 

“good luck on your new niece or nephew, sir.” 

“thanks,” blurry said, and drove off. 

attendants were the fucking worst.

————————————

the thing about going home was that josh didn’t exactly have a “home.” he had his school dormitory that he paid for with the money his parents left him. 

getting out of the hospital was easy enough. he was, like, really good at pretending to be okay. he served his first month or so, but they let him out as soon as he started giving bright smiles and swallowing his meds. they gave him a bottle when he left. he threw it out in the lobby trash. things gave him a stomachache just to look at.

————————————

one foggy february morning, tyler joseph gave his mom an extra tight hug before he left, gave his brother the necklace that he wore every day, and set off to drive to school, never to return again.

he couldn’t focus during the day, nervously bouncing his leg and finding his eyes shifting to the clock on the wall. 1:00. 1:30. 2:00. fifteen minutes left. 

“tyler joseph to the main office, please.” tyler’s eyes widened. did they know? no, that wasn’t possible, he didn’t tell anyone yet. 

he was a nervous wreck by the time he got to the office. the secretary gave him a bright smile.

“hello, mr. joseph! we were just wondering if you could take the last couple minutes of your day to put this box by dorm number 52.” she gestured to the cardboard box on her desk. it was labeled “joshua dun.” he blinked at it.

“..what’s it for?” he asked bluntly.

“one of our dorm students is returning tomorrow night. we want to have everything he left while he was... gone,” she lowered her eyes for a second. “to be there for him in the morning.”

that was a place to stay, if only for one night. it wouldn’t hurt to be somewhere familiar for his last day in town. 

he entered dorm number 52 with the box of joshua dun’s things and looked around. it was pretty empty, the only thing left on the wall being a calendar. he noticed that it was still flipped to december, and the last few days weren’t crossed off. 

joshua dun must have had one hell of a holiday.

**Author's Note:**

> comments are appreciated!!


End file.
